Artist Detail

Robert Frederic Hagan (Canada 1918-2003)

HAGAN, Robert Frederic (Canada 1918 – 2003)

Born in Toronto, Ontario, he studied at the Ontario College of Art, the Art Students League, New York, and lithography in that city under George Miller. He returned to Canada where he was resident artist at Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario, from 1942 to 1946; taught evenings at the Northern Vocational School, Toronto, 1945 to 1946.1 In 1946 he joined the staff of the Ontario College of Art where he has continued to instruct in drawing and graphics.2 Over the years he has exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy, the Ontario Society of Artists, the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, the Canadian Group of Painters, the Canadian Society of Graphic Art (member) and the Canadian Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers (member). In 1947 he won the George A. Reid Silver Award at the annual exhibition of the Canadian Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers for his lithograph “Rebellious Hills” reproduced in Canadian Art3 May of 1947. Hugh Thomson4 writing in the Toronto Star in 1953 noted the following of his work, “One of the distinctive qualities about the watercolor paintings of Frederick Hagan is that he can take commonplace subjects and fill them with interest . . . Hagan adds enough drama to heighten interest but without melodramatizing. In his wilder views of Algonquin Park he gets more dramatic in an effort to capture nature in varied aspects.” A lithograph which he did in 1950 entitled “Molly” (an excellent study) was reproduced in Paul Duval’s book Canadian Drawings and Prints pu­blished in 1952. He exhibited with Eric Freifeld, Tom Lapierre and John Newman, (all staff members of the Ontario College of Art) at Glenhyrst, Ontario, in February of 1967.6 He died in 2003.